WMS STEM - Standard 11: Integration of STEM in Disciplines

NARRATIVE

Winfield City Schools ensures that STEM learning experiences integrate all STEM disciplines with an emphasis on processes and practices associated with STEM. Winfield City Schools recognize that we are educating students for a post-modern workplace that demands various skills across a variety of situations and environments. As a result, Winfield City Schools expects educators, administrators, and other faculty members to collaborate across disciplines and break down the old way of teaching that is still present in American schools. Individually, educators are required to build on information and skills that students are learning in other subjects. Furthermore, educators are expected to collaborate with other grade levels to extend learning and experiences.

Educators meet on a regular basis to coordinate efforts and ensure that educators are prepared for the cross-curricular or cross-grade-level STEM projects/lessons/activities. Moreover, educators participate in professional development opportunities that integrate high-quality curriculum with STEM disciplines to build capability. Excitingly, many projects at Winfield City Schools not only involve multiple subjects and/or grade levels, but they also involve community members or other professionals related to the projects/activities.

A few examples of Winfield City School's cross-curricular and cross-grade-level projects are the Dizzy Deans Fireworks project involving 6th and 7th grades at the middle school, a nearby community college, and Winfield City High School Agriculture class; the Student Spaceflight Experiment Project involving NASA; the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Competition, where a sixth- grade class worked with local emergency response teams to design an emergency drone; and a military project, Operation Survival, that involved a logistics assignment with a WMS teacher/Captain in the Army Reserves and her General.

Strengths: Engagement is Winfield City School System's strength in Standard 11. STEM integration across disciplines, grade levels, and school systems are highly evident and important to our faculty and staff. All educators and students have opportunities to engage in ongoing learning opportunities to build STEM integration.

Opportunities to Improve: Winfield City School System displays two areas that need to improve: Results and Sustainability. Winfield City School System uses formative and summative assessment data to drive instruction, but we are not consistent with using data and documentation from the STEM Standard 11 type activities to display growth over time.

Dizzy Dean's Fireworks

Dizzy Dean’s Fireworks has been a staple in the community of Winfield since the year 2002. Glenn Dodd, owner and operator of Dizzy Dean’s Fireworks was a graduate of Winfield City High School. Glenn, now a resident of Northport, began his firework business in his hometown of Winfield and is now making his way back home for a business expansion. Dizzy Dean’s Fireworks Supercenter is being built in Winfield and is set for a soft opening this winter with a grand opening the following summer. Winfield City Schools is an active partner with Mr. Dodd, creating various projects to be displayed within the new supercenter. Sixth grade students are working to create an exhibit entitled “Fireworks From a Sixth Grade Perspective”. Students are actively studying the history, science, and mathematics found in designing and creating fireworks, as well as in the business aspect of selling and distributing of fireworks. Included in the exhibit will be a student made model, showcasing the makeup of a firework. Students are also practicing their presentation skills and researching marketing strategies to create videos to promote Mr. Dodd’s business. Additionally, students are creating a video to inform consumers of the safety precautions necessary when buying and shooting fireworks. Seventh grade students are partnering with students at Bevill State Community College to create the very first disco firecracker ever made, that will be displayed in the center of the store. The disco firecracker will spin and shine, creating a fun and exciting environment for Dizzy Dean’s Fireworks customers. Finally, the Agribusiness department and students are designing and building a spinning wheel to be used by customers. “Spin the Wheel to get A Deal”, as said by Mr. Dodd, will be a crucial addition to his business strategy. Winfield City Schools is excited to have formed a partnership with such a stakeholder in the community as Glenn Dodd and Dizzy Dean’s Fireworks.

samsung 001.mov

Samsung Solve for Tommorrow

Each year, Samsung hosts a $2 million national competition for public schools grades 6-12 in which students are asked to consider how science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) can be used to create change in their communities. With the help of their teachers, students can apply to the contest and compete to win up to $100,000 in prizes for their school, plus the opportunity to work with Samsung employees to develop their prototypes.

Winfield Middle School has submitted to this project many times, and were State Winners with an emergency drone design. The students worked with local emergency response teams (police, fire, and ems) to design and build an emergency drone to be used in difficult situations that may arise in the community.

SSEP

SSEP is about immersing and engaging students and their teachers in every facet of real science—on the high frontier—so that students are given the chance to be scientists—and experience science firsthand.

More broadly, SSEP is about a commitment to student ownership in exploration, to science as a journey, and to the joys of learning.

Each community participating in SSEP is provided a very real research asset – a flight certified, straightforward to use microgravity research mini-laboratory, and guaranteed launch services to transport the mini-laboratory to the International Space Station (ISS) where it is operated by the astronauts. It is a precious and limited research asset given that the mini-laboratory can only contain a single student-team-designed microgravity experiment. After a typical 4 to 6 week stay in orbit, the experiment will be returned to Earth for harvesting and analysis by the community’s student flight team.

Mirroring how professional researchers formally compete to obtain limited research assets, the participating community carries out a ‘call for proposals. More specifically, the community conducts a local Flight Experiment Design Competition, engaging potentially hundreds of students in teams of typically 3-5, with each team vying for the community’s single experiment slot by proposing a microgravity research program that can be carried out in the mini-laboratory. The competition is conducted through the formal submission of real (but grade-level appropriate) research proposals by the student teams – as is standard practice for professional researchers. 50-80 flight experiment proposals are typically secured across a single pre-college community. At least 10 proposals are required for an undergraduate community.

Each community’s flight experiment is selected through a formal 2-step proposal review process. The final selection is carried out by the SSEP National Step 2 Review Board, which meets at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. The flight experiment then undergoes a 4-month NASA flight safety review at Johnson Space Center; laboratory refinement by the student flight team; handover to Nanoracks in Houston for integration into the SSEP experiments payload; and payload integration into the ferry vehicle for flight to ISS. SSEP experiment payloads launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

Winfield City Schools has participated in this project for the last four years. The most recent winning team was a group of sixth-grade students that wrote a proposal on the effects of microgravity on the germination of Aloe barbadensis seeds. The proposal for this project can be viewed below.

Samsung Solve For Tomorrow

Student Spaceflight Experiment Project

SSEP ALOE Vera_step 1 FINAL DOCUMENT.docx

Operation Survival

Operation Survival Presentation.pptx

Operation Survival

Operation Survival is one of the Sixth Grade military projects that WMS sixth grade students worked on. One of the previous WMS sixth grade teachers (now WES principal) was a Captain (now a Major) in the Army. While working in sixth grade, Mrs. Long, headed a cross curricular project that integrated the military with STEM. During these yearly projects, the sixth grade students were given a real military problem and worked to come up with the best possible solutions to the problem.

The teachers worked with Colonel Will Guenther, a superior officer to Mrs. Long, to adapt a scenario, which involved figuring logistics for military transportation. Various assignments were given to the students to align with the science and engineering process. Furthermore, the teachers incorporated math, science, ELA, and history with this large-scale STEM project. The students were grouped into squads to collaborate and develop the best solution. One squad from each homeroom was choses as a platoon winner, leaving sixth grade with four squads to present solutions in the final presentation process.

During this STEM project, the students were awarded the privilege to travel to the Red Stone Arsenal where they witnessed how our enemies' construct various types of bombs and how our k-9 partners protect the population from possible threats. They were also allowed to visit the airfield, where students were able to view a Cargo plane.